On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 04:16:46AM -0000, Grant Edwards wrote > Does the UEFI BIOS recognize that /dev/sda1 exists, but just isn't > bootable? If yes, then it should be possible to install Grub on a USB > key and boot a kernel on /dev/sda1. It might be simpler to just put > the kernel and initrd on the USB key also. Though boot time might be > slightly slower that way, it won't affect performance after that.
The point of this excercise is to bypass UEFI BIOS as much as possible. The machine will happily automatically boot from the Gentoo minimal install USB key, which I believe is grub, so that works. And the minimal install does indeed recognize /dev/sda, which is why I was able to install linux in the first place. What I'm looking for is the grub "recipie" to automatically hand off control to /dev/sda1 at bootup. This will require leaving a USB key permanently in one of the 6 USB ports in the back of the machine. I've been using lilo for 20 years plus, so I don't have a clue about grub and how it works. I generally have 2 kernels available on the lilo boot menu, "production" and "experimental". I test the "expermental" kernel for a while before copying it over the "production" kernel. My menu normally waits up to 15 seconds. If no keypress, it defaults to the "production" kernel. Grub would need to load one of /boot/kernel.experimental or /boot/kernel.production. I could re-arrange the layout if necessary. Here's my current /boot layout... [d531][waltdnes][~] ll /boot total 18412 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 22 21:42 . drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4096 Oct 24 12:14 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 11 19:55 .keep -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 13 05:57 .keep_sys-boot_lilo-0 -rw------- 1 root root 139264 Dec 22 21:42 .map -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2979997 Dec 21 19:31 System.map.experimental -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2991033 Oct 13 06:03 System.map.production -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Oct 13 06:04 boot.0800 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 90538 Dec 21 19:31 config.experimental -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 90579 Oct 13 06:03 config.production -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6214192 Dec 21 19:31 kernel.experimental -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6271536 Oct 13 06:03 kernel.production -- Walter Dnes <[email protected]> I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
